Live Review: Parkway Drive @ Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House

There’s a moment in Metallica’s landmark live album with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, 1999's S&M, where the opening instrumental The Call Of Ktulu segues into Master Of Puppets in a sonic explosion, and it becomes apparent that this experiment – combining classical music with thrash metal – really works.

Indeed, the drama of a fully-fledged symphonic orchestra serves only to heighten both the heaviness and the pantomime; nothing makes a riff heavier than an army of violas, violins, and cellos!

But Metallica is one thing; what about metalcore?

Based on previous experiments, notably by Bring Me The Horizon and Architects, “screamo with strings” ultimately results in a sound reminiscent of a Warped Tour band, with a particularly prominent live synth.

However, neither of the above has the musical instinct – or excellence – of Australia’s heaviest exports, Parkway Drive.

Still, the question remained; could this band of Byron Bay moshers pull off a show in an all seated concert hall, with an audience in black tie, with a back catalogue not exactly suited (you would think) to the halls of high culture, and with orchestra in tow, at the first time of asking?

Following a dramatic Welcome To Country featuring three Indigenous dancers and an orchestral overture, the band (Winston McCall, Jeff Ling, Luke Kilpatrick, Ben Gordon, and Jai O’Connor), clad in performance blacks, arrived onstage and ripped into Home Is For The Heartless – in doing so, putting any doubts to rest; like Metallica 26 years ago, this was a show that worked.

From the first anthemic refrains of the early career arena anthem, the band proved that it belonged in this kind of setting.

Building the evening around the concept of Home – also the name of the forthcoming concert film of this show – meant extra special attention was paid to the interior of the hall, with the drum riser featuring an incredible installation of native flowers, and what appeared to be grass underneath the orchestra.

With a choir also filing onstage for specific songs, it quickly became apparent that, rather than just riffs with string beds, this was a full-tilt heavy metal extravaganza.

The opening quarter of an hour proved unrelenting, with festival staples Glitch, Prey, and Carrion all detonating in the concert hall, with the added gusto of wonderfully dramatic orchestral arrangements, composed chiefly by the band’s long-time collaborator, Joel Farland, alongside Tim Davies, and the evenings conductor, Alec Roberts.

Unlike other baroque-and-roll experiments, Parkway Drive don’t taper their sound for the occasion; they blast through cuts like Soul Bleach, Chronos, and early career favourite Horizons with the same razor-sharp aggression as any other show – and their orchestral colleagues are notably cranked through the Opera House PA, to keep up.

However, it would have been remiss for the band not to use the occasion to give some of their softer numbers the complete classical treatment; as such, the spoken word-led The Colour Of Leaving closed the first half sublimely, with a visibly emotional McCall leading proceedings, while the cinematic, menacing Cemetery Bloom was brought to life with the choir.

Of course, the evening's highlights were always going to be Parkway’s newer, arena and European festival-made material. 

The dramatic Darker Still proved so, with just the slyest of winks to the pantomime of it all coming with McCall dramatically unfurling a tambourine to bash along with lead shredder Ling’s proper guitar-hero moment. 

Likewise, the live premiere of A Deathless Song – featuring Tonight Alive vocalist Jenna McDougall (one of two guest appearances, alongside rapper Nooky for Shadow Boxing) – will likely be the best metalcore power ballad anyone is likely to witness.

Crushed had the entire Opera House heaving, the 2,000 attendees headbanging in their chairs, and a percussion solo led into a savage rendition of Dark Days, which saw blast-beats played in the Opera House, likely for the first time. 

But the blockbuster moment came in Wild Eyes, by now a bonafide metal classic, with its sing-along guitar hook and neck-snapping breakdown – here given extra weight by 40 other musicians – proving to be a dazzling finale. 

With orchestral arrangements composed with the metalhead at the front of mind, this show was proof of the oft-cited (but poorly justified) adage that metal and classical music can be bedfellows.

It wasn’t hard to imagine a Rachmaninoff or Stravinsky raising bony horns in approval at this – and as the orchestra departed to the roars of the adrenalised mob, it was clear that classical music had won some new admirers tonight too.

A total, unforgettable triumph.